About the author

Donn Risolo has been a soccer writer, editor and publicist since 1973. His new book, “Soccer Stories: Anecdotes, Oddities, Lore and Amazing Feats,” was released recently by the University of Nebraska Press.

"From conspiracy to controversy, this is a unique look at famous and not-so-famous incidents from world soccer. There's something here for all who love the game."

-- JP Dellacamera
World Cup and Olympic soccer commentator

"Risolo's Soccer Stories is precisely what it promises to be .... The author delivers it all in conversational, enthusiastic, and readable prose."

-- Benjamin D. Lisle
Journal of Sport History

"Fans will get a kick out of Soccer Stories: Anecdotes, Oddities, Lore and Amazing Feats. Read about highlights in soccer history from around the world, including Brazilian players paid in cattle, an African club that scored 149 goals against itself in one game, and more."

In a classic marked by two brilliant goals by substitute Gareth Bale and two inexplicable blunders by goalkeeper Loris Karius, Real Madrid defeated Liverpool, 3-1, at Kiev’s Olympic Stadium to win its third consecutive UEFA Champions League crown and extend its record to 13 European championships.

The game will be remembered for Bale’s spectacular bicycle-kick strike in the 64th, two minutes after he entered the match, a goal that snapped a 1-1 tie. But it was the misadventures of Karius that decided things.

Underdog Liverpool had applied considerable pressure in a scoreless first half, so there was little concern in the 51st minute when Karius collected an over-hit Real ball and turned to bowl it, carelessly, to his right. A pressuring Karim Benzema, however, stuck out a right foot and sent the ball rolling gently into the Liverpool goal.

Liverpool drew level just four minutes later on a strike by Sadio Mane. Bale’s overhead stunner put Real Madrid ahead for good, but a second Karius howler, in the 83rd, handed the Spanish giants their fourth European title in five years.

Given yards of space by the Liverpool defense, Bale lined up a 35-yard shot from the right and sent a blistering, knuckling left-footed shot on goal that Karius had comfortably covered. However, the ball broke through his hands and twisted over his left shoulder for an insurance goal.

While Karius reacted to the defeat with tears, Real was left to contemplate its future. Reigning FIFA World Player of the Year Cristiano Ronaldo, 33, who turned in a quiet performance, could be on the move, as could 28-year-old Bale, who’d been demoted to the bench by coach Zinedine Zidane, now the first man to coach three straight UEFA Champions League winners. Days later, Zidane, choosing to go out on top, resigned as Real boss. [May 31]

Comment: Turns out, Karius was suffering from a concussion.

In the 25th minute, Real’s Sergio Ramos brought down Mohamed Salah with a harsh tackle that resulted in strained ligaments. The Egyptian marksman, who had scored an English Premier League-record 32 goals and 44 on the season, carried on until he was substituted five minutes later.

Ramos wasn’t done. Four minutes into the second half, on a Real corner kick, he delivered a devastating right elbow to Karius’ face. The foul on Salah drew no yellow card; the elbow to Karius went undetected.

Then came the woozy Karius’ bizarre decision to try to roll a ball past a lurking Benzema, followed a half-hour later by the complete mis-read on the dipping shot by Bale.

Upon his return to England, Karius flew to America to begin a vacation but was ordered by his club, dutifully following head injury protocol, to get examined at Massachusetts General in Boston, where he was seen by Dr. Ross Zafonte, a leading expert in the treatment of NFL players suffering from head trauma. He concluded that the ‘keeper indeed sustained a concussion from the Ramos blow. “Visual spatial dysfunction existed” and “additional symptomatic and objectively noted areas of dysfunction also persisted,” according to Zafonte. He also expected Karius to make a full recovery.

Now we know. But what will come of it?

Probably nothing. To FIFA’s credit, world soccer has moved to recognize and address head injuries, especially after the 2014 World Cup final, when German midfielder Christoph Kramer played 14 minutes after being flattened in a collision with Argentina’s Ezequiel Garay. (“Ref, is this the final?” Referee Nicola Rizzoli, later: “I thought he was joking and made him repeat the question.” Kramer: “I need to know if this is really the final.” Rizzoli: “Yes.” Kramer: “Thanks, it was important to know that.”). That’s a head injury, and Kramer was taken off in the 31st minute after slumping to the turf.

But, in the case of Karius, it is unfortunate that so dramatic an example of the impact of a head injury to an athlete will go unnoticed in this country because it occurred in a soccer match, played a dozen time zones away.

King of the Hill in America is the National Football League, which has done its best to run away from concussions, while U.S. Soccer, the National Hockey League and other domestic sports organizations have addressed the problem to varying degrees. The NFL should be taking the lead, but instead its resistance leaves the general public with the image of the head injury as an athlete flat on his back, out cold, or possibly stumbling about the field in a stupor. Karius was an example what happens when a player is standing upright, seemingly OK but suffering from “visual spatial and additional areas of dysfunction.” A sports fan can disregard the well-being of the players and blithely go on enjoying the show. But maybe that fan will at least be more concerned with head injuries when he recognizes that they could affect how his hero’s foggy-headed decisions may play a part in the final score or, in the NFL’s case, the all-important point spread.

Stanford University sophomore Jordan Morris scored four minutes into the second half and his replacement, erstwhile striker Juan Agudelo, applied the clinching goal in the 72nd minute as the U.S. defeated Mexico by that familiar score of 2-0 in a friendly played before a sellout crowd of 64,369 at San Antonio’s Alamodome.

The 20-year-old Morris, who made his international debut in November at Ireland, became the first college player to start for the U.S. in two decades. Agudelo hadn’t played for the U.S. since November 2012 and hadn’t scored since March 2011.

With the match not on the FIFA international schedule, the U.S. lineup was dominated by Major League Soccer players while Mexico was largely a Liga MX side.

The U.S. is 13-5-5 against Mexico since 2000, 17-11-9 since 1990 and 19-33-14 since the two nations first met in 1934. [April 15]

Comment: Just a friendly and just a warm-up to this summer’s CONCACAF Gold Cup between two sides missing their biggest names, many of whom stayed with their overseas clubs. U.S. coach Juergen Klinsmann had this to say to MLSsoccer.com a few days before the match, which was played a couple of weeks after the Americans lost at Denmark, 3-2, and earned a 1-1 draw at Switzerland:

“. . . It is a great opportunity for everyone (individually) to show where they are right now, where they are at this stage with MLS teams, down in Mexico, and just show us at what stage you are. And then obviously the closer we get to the Gold Cup the more we kind of define things.”

Obviously.

And because of logistics, Klinsmann and his predecessors have had to play the hand they’re dealt when it comes to personnel, rounding up European-based starters for one friendly, then European-based bench sitters and MLS and Liga MX players for another. (Playing outside the FIFA international window, like the Mexico game, only makes things more difficult.) But in his nearly five-year tenure as U.S. boss, Klinsmann has established not just a revolving door but a spinning revolving door to his team’s dressing room, frustrating observers who would like to see him, at the very least, settle on a back line so those four souls don’t have to introduce themselves to one another before every kickoff. They might even learn to play as a unit.

True, the U.S. got a shutout victory in San Antonio with yet another eclectic group, but that quote and that game only made a recent online article by Bobby Warshaw all the more interesting. A 26-year-old midfielder for Baerum of the Norwegian first division who played for the U.S. U-17s, FC Dallas and two Swedish first division clubs, Warshaw wrote:

“Juergen Klinsmann is a tough cat to understand sometimes, but his comments prior to the U.S. men’s national team game with Switzerland shed a little light for me. Whenever Fox Sports’ Rob Stone asked a question about the team, Klinsmann put the emphasis on the players. He never mentioned team goals. Rather, he kept referring to the players, suggesting that ‘the players have the opportunity’ and ‘it’s a big time in their careers.’ It annoyed me.

“That doesn’t answer the question, Juergen. Why are you putting the weight on the players here? You’re always criticizing the players. He asked about the TEAM. How are you going to prepare the TEAM? You’re the man in charge.

“It seemed he was missing the boat.

“And then I remembered back to one of the first conversations I had in a European locker room. I had been there for a week on loan from my Major League Soccer team. I started talking to a guy in a nearby locker about his career. He said he didn’t want to be with the club long; he was going to move on to a bigger club soon. It seemed a strange thing to tell a teammate.

“I realized Klinsmann wasn’t shirking responsibility in the interview. He was making a statement that reflects his view of the game, and it’s something I think I’ve failed to understand about the coach: The European football culture where Klinsmann was raised revolves around individual ambition. Personal success means more than team accomplishments.

“It’s a funny feeling around a European locker room. Everyone is happy to be on the team, but everybody also wants to be on a different one. A lot of the players have one foot out the door as soon as they step in. If a European player could pick between a trophy at the end of the season and moving on to a bigger club, he would choose the move. And it’s all perfectly accepted. It’s a strange way to conduct a team. (I can’t imagine what it’s like to play for a feeder club like Ajax, where not a single person really wants to be on that team.)

“Every player in Europe has a small sense he will someday end up in Manchester United red. Seventy-five thousand fans, Champions League, multi-million-dollar deals all feel within your reach.

“In MLS, the ceiling seems so low. The league office won’t sell you; it has no incentive to. You work hard to get some playing time and then become a starter. Hopefully the team rewards you with a new contract, but it’s not likely. They pat themselves on the back for getting a good deal within the salary cap. They tell you to sacrifice for the team. You chug along.

“In Europe, the sky’s the limit. It’s an incredible feeling. It only takes one game or one good run for someone to spot you. The next morning your club sells you to pay the electric bill. You move up a step in a matter of days.

“It changes the way you see the game. Winning isn’t the be-all and end-all. You don’t play to win the game . . . . You play because you’re personally ambitious. Ambition drives performance. And if everyone plays well, then the team wins the game. That drive, that ambition, that personal selfishness helps players, and the team, perform.

“This is strange to Americans. We hate to think anyone is playing for himself. We loath selfish players. And that’s one of our disconnects with Klinsmann. Klinsmann doesn’t view it as selfish. He sees it as natural, if not necessary.

“The way you talk about the team doing well is to talk about the players playing well. All of a sudden, ‘the players have the opportunity’ makes a lot more sense. It’s the individual’s drive that moves the team forward.

“But players still need direction and game plan, neither of which Klinsmann seems to provide. Emphasis on a player’s individual ambition aside, at some point coaching needs to be done.

“Klinsmann has a general view of the team that we don’t seem to like. Some wise person in history surely said that hatred is fueled by ignorance–and seeing Klinsmann through this European lens at least helps us understand the man a little more. But who knows, maybe that understanding simply gives a little more merit to the hatred.

“Klinsmann grew up in a sporting model different than the one touted in the United States. I don’t think it explains everything, but it explains a little.”

Warshaw is certainly right in that Klinsmann’s outlook runs counter to American sensibilities. The U.S. sinks or swims as a team; for decades, it has been a one-for-all, all-for-one outfit out of necessity. Go down the list of the USA’s greatest upset victories–from England in 1950 through Portugal in 2002 and beyond–and in every case the whole was greater than the sum of its parts compared to the individual international stars they defeated.

And U.S. Soccer has even had to stand its approach to youth soccer on its head in an effort to match the player development methods of top soccer-playing nations. When Claudio Reyna was appointed the USSF’s youth technical director in 2010 (a year before Klinsmann took the helm of the national team), his curriculum could be summed up by this quote: “We care about how many players you develop rather than how many trophies you win.” It was refreshing . . . and altogether Klins-ian.

So the focus now is on the individual, not the team. It can only be hoped that when these sparkling individuals reach the national team, it is Berti Vogts who can help the rugged individualist Klinsmann turn a collection of talent into a unit, supplying Warshaw’s “direction and game plan.” With Klinsmann under fire for his selections and methods and tactics, it was Vogts who was brought aboard two months ago as technical advisor to do for Klinsmann, perhaps, what Joachim Loew did for him at the 2006 World Cup when Klinsy was German National Team boss. Vogts, an unselfish, blue-collar player nicknamed “The Terrier” would’ve been Warshaw’s prototypical American, a guy playing for the team, not to move up the soccer ladder. Vogts, after all, toiled 15 seasons in the Bundesliga, all with the glamorous Borussia Moenchengladbach.

Major League Soccer Commissioner Dan Garber fired a broadside at U.S. National Team coach Juergen Klinsmann, accusing him of comments damaging to his league and the sport in this country.

Garber summoned the media to rip Klinsmann for comments made two days earlier in which he said Clint Dempsey and Michael Bradley hurt their international careers by returning from Europe to play for MLS clubs. The commissioner also said Klinsmann’s decision to leave Landon Donovan, the face of MLS, off his 2014 World Cup squad was “inexcusable.”

Said Klinsmann on Monday, the day before the USA’s friendly with Honduras in Boca Raton: “I made clear with Clint’s move back and Michael’s move back that it’s going to be very difficult to keep the same level that they experienced at the places where they were. It’s just reality. It’s just being honest.”

Garber fired back the day after the 1-1 draw in Florida: “Juergen’s comments are very, very detrimental to the league, to the sport of soccer in North America, detrimental to everything we’re trying to do. Not only that, I think they’re wrong.

“To have a national team coach saying that signing with our league is not going to be good for their careers, and not good for their prospects with the national team, is incredibly damaging to our league.

“I will do anything and everything to defend our league, our players and our owners. I don’t believe anyone is above the sport, and I believe everyone has to be accountable for their behavior.” [October 15]

Comment: They both need to shut up.

But, of course, they can’t. Klinsmann will continue to be asked point-blank about this player and that, and Garber has to protect his product.

Klinsmann was only telling the truth. To grow, anyone in the U.S. player pool needs to play for a club at the highest level possible, and that’s in Europe, not MLS, provided it’s in the top division of a top soccer-playing nation. Garber’s reaction–writing angry letters to Klinsmann and U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati and publicly blasting the national team coach/national technical director in a hastily arranged press teleconference–made him look peevish and unprofessional.

However, Klinsmann has to face the fact that any U.S. player, no matter how talented, is taking a risk in signing with a European club. A player has to play, and if he’s shelved by injury or a drop in performance or a coach who thinks little of American players (there’s plenty of those), he’s regressing and probably should have remained in MLS, where he’d be considered a star. (That description fits a player like Bradley, who left Roma for Toronto FC and a healthy pay increase after the Italian club brought in several new players, threatening the midfielder’s playing time.) These guys have to think of their career as a whole, and they’re not on the level of Klinsmann, who in his day would have started, and starred, for any powerhouse club in Europe.

Garber needs to rein it in, skate past this ongoing issue and resume talking up MLS’s strengths, which are a tremendous fan experience unique to American sports and a level of talent that will entertain all but the Euro-snobs. If he continues to have a beef with Klinsmann, Garber sits on the U.S. Soccer board, the body that serves as Klinsmann’s boss, and he can air his disagreements behind closed doors with the people who matter when it comes to the fellow at the helm of the men’s national teams program. As for Klinsmann, he needs to become a better diplomat without losing his credibility with a press and public that is growing increasingly sophisticated and demanding. Either that or hope that MLS both improves on the field and stops making itself an increasingly attractive choice for top American players faced with a difficult career decision.

A highly motivated Ukraine turned a friendly into a mini-clinic as it defeated the World Cup-bound U.S. National Team, 2-0, in Larnaca, Cyprus.

Andriy Yarmolenko scored 12 minutes into the game and Marko Devic iced the victory with a 68th-minute goal. On each strike, the Ukrainians took advantage of a shaky American defense anchored by center backs Anthony Brooks and Oguchi Onyewu.

The match, originally scheduled for Kharkiv, was moved 600 miles to Cyprus’ Papadopoulos Stadium days after the Russian military intervention in Crimea. Only 1,573 spectators were on hand for the hastily relocated game, many of them Ukrainian expatriates who broke into chants of “No war in Ukraine!” after the final whistle. [March 5]

Comment I: Clint Dempsey did not score against Ukraine, nor did a slumping Jozy Altidore; Landon Donovan, preparing for the Los Angeles Galaxy’s MLS opener three days later, wasn’t even there, nor was playmaker Michael Bradley, who recently moved from AS Roma to Toronto FC. Nevertheless, after the USA’s shutout loss, the most indispensable man of the night proved to be another no-show, right fullback Steve Cherundolo.

Coach Juergen Klinsmann’s back four figures to be Stoke City’s Geoff Cameron–or Brad Evans of the Seattle Sounders–plus the Galaxy’s Omar Gonzales and Matt Besler of Sporting Kansas City and the veteran DaMarcus Beasley of Puebla, who has revived his international career as a left back. But despite Beasley’s 114 caps, the back line will sorely miss the experience and steadying influence of the 34-year-old Cherundolo, whose ongoing knee problems make his appearance at a third World Cup a long-shot. Cherundolo has 87 caps to the combined 30 of Gonzalez and Besler, but he brings much more than just a wise old head.

Without the feisty, reliable, attack-minded Cherundolo, Klinsmann is without the player who’d most closely resemble the right back at his disposal if he was still coach of Germany–Philipp Lahm. Cherundolo, of course, is not quite in Lahm’s league, figuratively speaking, although both play in the German Bundesliga. While Cherundolo usually captains perennial also-ran Hannover 96, Lahm, a member of the 2006 and 2010 All-World Cup teams, captains both European champion Bayern Munich and the German National Team. Nevertheless, Cherundolo is as important to his team as Lahm is to his. At 5-foot-7, Lahm is known as “The Magic Dwarf.” Without the 5-6 Cherundolo, Klinsmann will be missing his own magic dwarf.

Comment II: The Ukraine-U.S. match and several other friendlies–many of them World Cup tune-ups for one or both sides–were played March 5, which marked the 100-day countdown to the kickoff of Brasil ’14. What ESPN2 viewers of that game and the Italy-Spain game that followed were not subjected to was what they would’ve seen four years ago at the same point ahead of South Africa ’10: promos touting ABC/ESPN/ESPN2’s upcoming World Cup coverage featuring the play-by-play talents of Martin Tyler.

Ian Darke, whose call of Donovan’s last-gasp goal for the U.S. against Algeria four years ago is now part of American soccer lore, has replaced Tyler as the lead commentator for ABC/ESPN’s coverage in Brazil. Darke will be the play-by-play man for the June 12 Brazil-Croatia tournament opener, all U.S. matches, the final July 13, and other games.

British viewers in this country might miss Tyler, who we are given to believe is to soccer across the Pond what Al Michaels is to major sports here. But American viewers will find Darke a significant upgrade–if they haven’t already over the last four years with his TV calls here of MLS, U.S. National Team and English Premier League games. Tyler has proven to be urbane, witty, knowledegable, and–unlike Darke–understated to a fault. Unfortunately, the end result is play-by-play that is very easy to tune out if the game Tyler is calling isn’t exactly, well, scintillating. Tyler describing “a thoughtful, probing ball down the left flank,” is not unlike a visit to the doctor’s office, where Dr. Tyler, the proctologist, is carrying on a pleasant, soothing, benign conversation with his patient while the patient isn’t really concentrating on this pleasant, soothing, benign chat.

“So, how are we today? Any complaints?”

“Well, actually, I ….”

“Yes, of course. Now, shall we try to breath normally? This portion will take but a minute ….”

Comment III: At the Ukraine match, the U.S. sported Nike’s newest stab at designing a national team jersey. Gone were the welcomed horizontal red-and-white striped shirts that all but shouted “USA,” replaced by something straight out of the bleach bucket: a white shirt with single red pinstripes on the sleeves and collar, plus the U.S. Soccer logo, not the classic, old-fashioned stars-and-stripes shield the players sported during the 2013 USSF centennial season.

The collar is quite alright–a soccer jersey without a collar looks more like a glorified T-shirt. But Nike’s end result is a boring jersey more suited for playing golf or tennis or lounging about. And maybe that’s what the marketing geniuses at Nike had in mind all along when it comes to replica jersey sales.

With nearly four months remaining before kickoff, the United States has the highest number of allocated tickets among visiting countries for the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil.

A total of 125,465 tickets were distributed to the U.S., according to FIFA.

Through all sales channels, a total of 2.3 million tickets have been assigned to the nations attending the World Cup. After Brazil, which was allocated 906,433 tickets as the host, and the U.S., the following nations round out the top 10: Colombia (60,231), Germany (55,666), Argentina (53,809), England (51,222), Australia (40,446), France (34,971), Chile (32,189) and Mexico (30,238).

“We have seen the interest in the World Cup increase every four years and are excited to see the large number of tickets purchased for the games in Brazil,” said U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati. “There were more ticket requests than available tickets for all three of our first-round matches by a large margin, and we are once again expecting incredible fan support for the team during the 2014 FIFA World Cup.”

U.S. Soccer Supporters Club members who applied for tickets to the specific U.S. matches will be notified soon whether they were selected in the lottery.

The remaining tickets (approximately 160,000) will be available to the public through FIFA.com in the next window of the sales phase on March 12.

The 2014 FIFA World Cup runs from June 12 through July 13 across 12 venues in Brazil. The U.S. National Team was drawn into Group “G” and will open the tournament Monday, June 16, at 6 p.m. EDT against Ghana in Natal. The USA then faces Portugal on Sunday, June 22, at 6 p.m. EDT in Manaus, and Germany on Thursday, June 26, at 12 p.m. EDT in Recife. [February 21]

Comment: International soccer’s outlier has become a World Cup insider.

Only seven other countries that will compete at Brasil ’14 can match the USA’s record of appearing in the last six World Cups: host Brazil–which has never missed one–Spain, Italy, France, Argentina, Germany and South Korea. The U.S., which finished first in CONCACAF qualifiers for the second straight World Cup cycle, is No. 14 in the latest FIFA rankings and came close to becoming the region’s first nation to be seeded for the first round without hosting a World Cup. Fox/Telemundo has paid $1 billion for the U.S. rights to televise the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, topping a $600 million bid by ESPN/ABC, which, along with Univision, paid a combined $425 million to air the 2010 and 2014 World Cups, 2007 and 2011 Women’s World Cups and 2009 and 2013 FIFA Confederations Cups. Now this.

Obviously, while those 125,465 ticket orders may have come from America, many of those ticket holders will be scattered throughout Brazil this summer, following other national teams. This is, after all, a land of immigrants. (At the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, of the 2.8 million available tickets, sales to U.S. residents–more than 130,000–trailed only the host nation, although the American allotment for the U.S.-England opener at the 44,530-seat Royal Bafokeng Stadium was just 5,200.) Moreover, this is a wealthy nation with plenty of folks who can afford the trip to an exotic, alluring destination like Brazil.

Though its odds of getting out of the so-called “Group of Death” and winning Brasil ’14 are a daunting 100-to-1, the United States, on every level, has become a significant part of the planet’s most-watched sporting event. That’s a far cry from the beginning of its World Cup run at Italia ’90, when a U.S. team of current and former college standouts needed a miracle to qualify for the first time in four decades, then crashed out in three games, supported by a smattering of American fans, many of whom were already in Italy on vacation and decided, on a whim, to have a look.